Well my cat has told me he thinks Stella will win against all odds. We just have to wait and see.

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(That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it...)

Hello, that one guy that always reviews things months after they came out (I have a big backlog, okay), here to offer my random thoughts on this one.

If you're like me and skim the forum to see if something's worth buying: yes, this one is. I actually really like this series so far.

Having (for some reason) read no fewer than four "low status woman gets into an arranged marriage with a higher-status man, hijinx ensue" series in the past couple months, this is easily the best in that niche genre. Why? Because of the protagonist. Agnes is cool as hell. Most of the female leads in stories like this are 1) super plain looking, 2) very timid and unsure of themselves, 3) have very poor communication skills and most of the driving force of the plots revolve around dumb misunderstandings a normal person would have talked out and avoided.

Agnes is none of these things, being probably the most attractive female lead to a romance novel like this I've seen in some time. She's very self-confident once she's removed from her garbage circumstances. She's able to figure out "it's not me it's them" in regards to her past abuses. She leads one of the most healthy relationships with her new husband I've seen in a while, they communicate effectively the whole time.

In fact I'd go and say that's the series' greatest strength so far: the protagonists are all genuinely intelligent people that solve their problems intelligently with a minimum of "dumb misunderstandings" which I think is my single least favorite light novel trope of all time. It's basically totally gone here, which is very, very nice.

Hell, Agnes gets laid at the end of chapter 5. I've read books like this where that can take until the double digits of entries for some reason, lol. Both involved parties have a loving marriage and do the things that generally actually happen in such a relationship without the whole "oh not that's too much I'm going to be weirdly chaste for no reason" thing that happens in... a lot... of these types of books.

Having recently read the (honestly pretty bad) second entry into the goblin maiden series. There's a similar plot point there as one here: a powerful person tells the male lead "tough cookies man you're gonna have to divorce your wife now". In that series the protagonist for some reason, without consulting with his beloved wife at all, just decides "okay well I guess I'd better prepare for a divorce, if that's what'll make her happy oh well". In this story, the basically same thing happens, and Nazel's reaction to it is "immediately tell Agnes, mutually decide that's not gonna happen, make a plan to get out of it, and execute it". I like that. That's how a married couple should be acting.

As far as the plot being over, ya know, I don't really mind. The characters in this series (so far, maybe the next one is really bad, who knows) are likeable enough I'm perfectly fine with spending more time with them. There's enough stuff left hanging I think there are still stories left to tell. I mean, come now, Agnes needs to have a bun put in that oven. I hope something nice happens between Paul and Kelly, both of those poor guys seem like they haven't had a lot of happiness in their lives. Torre and Lucianne need to get married. The frontier still seems like a pretty underdeveloped place in general. I'm looking forwards to it. I thought this story was well enough written, I preordered the next one.

Random observations and thoughts:

The fact that the antagonist is "Princess Mia" was amusing. I kept thinking like, man, this is an even darker ending than the one the actual Princess Mia originally recieved. This is the timeline where she screws up so badly she doesn't even make it to the point where the revolution breaks out and she gets beheaded at 20. The good news is I'm sure eventually a time portal will open up on the island and she'll manage to go back to when she was 12, eat some really good tomato soup, meet Anne and Abel, and change the course of history for the better. If you know you know. :^)

I'm fine with how screwed Robin is. That was one of the more psychopathic and openly evil antagonists I've seen in a LN in quite some time. The guy's punishment is fitting.

I love how, again, our heroes notice the pattern and come to the correct conclusion that Robin is obviously using some form of mind control that seems to mostly affect women. Again, Nazel and Agnes are not stupid people and figure out what's going on pretty quickly. It's refreshing to see in a genre that's usually misunderstanding city.

I'm sad we didn't get an illustration of Agnes in her swimsuit. There's always next time :^)

I hope Lucianne gets out of her punishment soon. It really isn't like it's her fault, I hope they went light on her. The award for "the most useless magical abilities ever" have to go to her, man. "Turning your hair into a weapon" when you're a scared little shrinking wallflower. These gifts are not given out equally.

Agnes' love of throwing hardened food like rocks at people as a weapon was hilarious. I'm sure a hardened potato probably would hurt if it hit you in the head.

An eight legged spider horse hybrid sounds terrifying. I'm glad she's apparantly quite nice.

Names of characters: "Robin", "Mia", "Agnes", "Paul", "Kelly", "Julian", "Henry", and... "Nazelbart". Man, he drew the short end of the stick for names, jeez.

I liked how fast Agnes and Paul turn on their parents. They're obviously guilty and nasty people and both of them don't really bother getting sentimental about it. Another thing I wasn't really expecting.

Not gonna lie, I hope we catch up with Mia in the next book or two. Unlike her mother and Robin who were both terrible people, what's wrong with them is wrong all the way through them, Mia's problems mostly stem from "mind control courtesy of Robin" mixed with "having truly abhorrent influences in her life in the form of her mother and supporters". She's already starting to reform. Ironically she seems on track to become what she was going to become anyways, a ruler of a region, just a smaller-time ruler of a smaller time region. She's currently enjoying being the one-eyed king of the land of the blind. I find that kind of funny.

I hope we get to see an illustration of tomboyprincess later. I have a type and it's her, deal with it. Bertram's a lucky boy.

So yeah. It was good. Read it. I hope the next one's good too. Easily the best of this genre of book I've read outside of maybe Marielle Clerac, which wins simply due to having a dozen issues to this series' 3.

@Ingraman
Yeah, I didn't remember a beach scene in the volume...

Finally managed to catch up.

I guess many agree that Eiwass is sus.
If I understand correctly, the powerful mercenary during the Sarjas attack was part of this mysterious organization, and he seemed to know some details about Ellie and Flugel. If Eiwass is the young master, this would explain his intel on Ellie as well.

Also, I forgot whether Silver Witch is a name for Elizabeth Leiston or Ellie Leis. But the fact that Spider knew her nickname might be another evidence.

As usual, I really enjoy the future exercpts.
So, it seems like Adel got to be a queen before the kingdom fall, and Ellie would manage to kill Bulat.

But I'm really concerned about the fact that there was no record of the Silver Witch having a kid. What happened to Alice???

@Abedeus Personally, I see the Kiryuu-vs.-Fallen Black encounter as the closest thing to a real 'final fight' that the series could've given us while sticking to its guns! I'm inclined to agree with the story itself on the point that Andou and Kiryuu having a full-blown brawl just never would've made sense, narratively or thematically, and going back to show us the rewritten-by-Andou-and-Kiryuu version in full detail would've felt superfluous to me since by that point, that narrative and its themes were already very firmly concluded. It would've been a (presumably lengthy) digression into a completely different series, essentially, and while I would absolutely love to read that digression, I also deeply sympathize with Andou's speech near the end of the novel about how it's far better to go out at your peak than to keep dragging out a story until you have no choice but to end it

Which is all to say: I see your point, but man, personally? This is exactly the ending that I felt this series needed, and I'm extremely happy that its author had the guts to commit to everything he'd set up and go through with it

@arghc said in Dahlia in Bloom Vol. 9 Discussion!:

Dahlia side stories!

And backstories. And maybe even some front stories if we're lucky.

Nosweil in a man's suit and gothic lolita dress (with pigtails).

Yeah. I can see that...

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@Rahul-Balaggan Thanks for the quick response. 😊 Eagerly awaiting the next installment.

Finally caught up... been so busy with work that the parts had piled up...

I also did not see the arch priestess being Nameless. It does make a kind of sense... but leads me to wondering what's become of the Spirit King?

And I had to laugh at him going all Gate of Babylon on Hydra at the end.

@Kotenmaru said in Mythical Hero Vol. 10 Discussion!:

@dragon3010 My impression was that she was the First Princess of this generation. I have been wrong before though.

The answer may be far less mysterious then it appears on the surface. She is apparently the daughter of the High King of Greif... she called him father when she killed him and the discussion between Hydra and Ladon after seemed to confirm it. And we know that Greif was founded by the brother of the 3rd Emperor. That would have made him also a member of the von Grantz family. So, assuming the line has reminded unbroken, the current first princess of the kingdom of Greif would also be a von Grantz.

@Betenoire Hey, give them credit... they are starting to come around!

Slowly.

With much self denial.

@heimdal7 yeah idk, alot of this ending is a bit weird to me? Maybe I misread myself but yeah I don't quite get why she could use all those powers with what she called "demonifcation" or w.e.

I'm glad to whoever's idea it was to have Alicia go commando ;)

I feel like this series is good but also maybe doesn't explain enough? Unless it's ment to confuse us as a reveal later but I think it could be done better if so.

@Whacka Yeah, I think so... We already know she's going to lose and forget this, classic dungeon dive this is worse than Dia and Lastiara combined...

Well that's a grim opening, the cover where everyone is walking into the light definitely didn't bode well, but I wasn't prepared for old Haruhiro speaking of everyone in the past tense and wondering if thing would have been better if he died. Still, the fact that he needs to explain in detail what a Sekaishu and Nightclad one means that they did win, it's a nice balance of grim and hopeful.

Also, I'm glad they go over the events of the last books, after 2 years I really needed it.

The only reason I can think for how the author is still allowed to write this way is because the editor realized that otherwise the series would be 10 volumes long instead of 30 and made less money.

@TheGrimLich what I like is that each of these plots brings something different that make the series more interesting. We got the satisfaction of Light getting his revenge on his former party, there are the battles with the masters where he and the summons have to actually put effort, plus all the matter about C that is still shrouded in mystery.
I'm not claiming this series is a masterpiece, but I'm really enjoying it, which is all that matters to me.

@Mythmuncher said in D-Genesis Vol. 6 Discussion!:

Volume 6, part 1:
'carying' should be 'carrying'.

I appreciate you trying to report this, but there's a couple things you should be aware of.

Firstly, we don't report errors in the prepub discussion topics—each series has its own thread dedicated to prepub corrections that you can find linked in the first post of every discussion thread. It makes it easier for the translation/editing team to find our reports if they're all in one place, you see. For D-Genesis, that thread would be https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/5432/d-genesis-corrections-topic?_=1706629330064

However, Volume 6 has already been published so that thread would no longer be a good place to report the issue. The folks at J-Novel Club request that if we find errors in a published book that we send them to support@j-novel.club.

However, I looked at my own published copy of Volume 6 and this particular issue was already fixed in the published version. The translation team doesn't always update the prepub parts to fix errors that get reported, so if you're reading volumes through the web reader (possibly renting?), just keep in mind errors you see might have already been found and fixed in the published version.

Why are these Family Tree missing in the translated version, when they are there in the Japanese version?

Vol.13 - Imperial family
Imperial family

Vol.13 - La clan
La clan

Why is this Family Tree missing in the translated version, when it's there in the Japanese version?

Vol.12 - You family, Gyoku clan
You family, Gyoku clan

Yay for slime diaries giving a different perspective on the events.

Shiori's impact is probably wider than many think, after all if you then include all the monsters who moved into living together with people and the bonds that are forming because of Rurii and Shiori... no to mention it's just getting started for some things. The preserved food the adventurer business is starting up, the search magic, some new revelations about combined magic, and even some changes in terms of education are really just at the starting line. Toss in the changes that her cuisine and the deepening of trade/interaction with the eastern nation.

I can't wait for Shiori to meet with Oliver and realize he was the "lost" man from back then. I wonder if it'll come up that she and Rurii was the inspiration to get a slime of his own.

I've just finished reading part 8 of volume 2 and the outcome of the match has left me cradling my head at how things can spiral to such a degree. While I'm curious of how things might play out, I wonder if I want to subject myself to more pain and agony that is to come 🫠